Netflix has picked up a 10-episode series, “Altered Carbon,” based on the 2002 book of the same name, Variety has learned.

The sci-fi series hails from Skydance Television with Laeta Kalogridis writing, exec producing and serving as showrunner. Kalogridis co-wrote the screenplays for Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Shutter Island,” plus “Terminator Genisys” and she’s attached to the sequel for the latter.

Based on Richard K. Morgan’s novel, “Altered Carbon” is set in the 25th century. In the futuristic story, the human mind has been digitized and the soul is transferable from one body to the next. Takeshi Kovacs, a former elite interstellar warrior known as an Envoy who has been imprisoned for 500 years, is downloaded into a future he had tried to stop. If he can solve a single murder in a world where technology has made death nearly obsolete, he’ll get a chance at a new life on Earth.

Along with Kalogridis, Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross will also serve as exec producers.

Edited January 20, 2016 by AncalagonTheBlacklink

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I just started reading The Steel Remains. I wasn't aware that it was set in the same world as some of the author's previous books until I started it. Am I going to be missing out on anything important, should I track down the previous books before I continue?

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The Steel Remains is Richard Morgan's first fantasy novel. I was not a fan of his fantasy books, but I am a huge fan of his sci-fi stuff. Altered Carbon (as well as all of the Takeshi Kovacs novels) and Market Forces I'd recommend to anyone.

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I just started reading The Steel Remains. I wasn't aware that it was set in the same world as some of the author's previous books until I started it. Am I going to be missing out on anything important, should I track down the previous books before I continue?

No. Though A Land Fit for Heroes is supposed to be in the very distant future of the Kovacs universe, it's not necessary to have read them. It's more like a bunch of nods and Easter eggs that only the most observant will notice, nothing plot critical.

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all of his books have nods to others. MArket Forces has the protagonist pick up a trashy cyber-punk novel about a guy who resurrects all the time and tries to solve a murder. And "thirteen/black man" could sort of squeeze into his books as a prequel series.

There are stronger hints in the fantasy series but they are still such that a TV company would be slightly insane to buy all 6 books as one package. Doing "Sharpe" as a sequel to "Stonehenge" by Bernard Conrnwell is closer in terms of chronology.

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Just read about the Netflix pick up. This should be potentially pretty interesting, especially if they touch on Morgan's themes and some of the philosophical questions raised by the work, rather than just starting it into a superficial sci-fi actioner.

It has some interesting ideas in it (I love the little science-fiction nods, like the ringed planet), and it's certainly choc-full of action. Problem is, if you take out the sex and gore, there really isn't all that much left. Morgan wants to rub the reader's nose in how edgy and cynical he is - and it gets tiresome.

It has some interesting ideas in it (I love the little science-fiction nods, like the ringed planet), and it's certainly choc-full of action. Problem is, if you take out the sex and gore, there really isn't all that much left. Morgan wants to rub the reader's nose in how edgy and cynical he is - and it gets tiresome.

(Edit - I suppose this is the Richard III thread. )

Felt exactly the same. The characters, IMO, weren't particularly compelling and I was left feeling no inclination to continue the series.

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The Steel Remains is okay but not great. Morgan I think was kind of still putting together ideas on the fly there, driven by the "gay protagonist" line and not really putting together the larger elements that would cohere the entire trilogy. The Cold Commands is vastly superior as a novel, on every single level.

Apart, presumably, from the interesting ideas, the little science fiction nods and the action (which last you seem to feel TSR has rather a lot of).

Oh, and the cynicism - don't forget that!

If I might draw a culinary analogy, the book has plenty of interesting spices, but outside "gay protagonist hacks up enemies" doesn't have a lot of meat. The action makes it highly readable, but tasting good doesn't mean a meal is filling or nutritious.

Good to know.

I'm not much of an intentional writer, see, so it's nice to be told what was going on in my head at the time I laid down the text.

Death of the Author, mate. I'm interpreting what I read on the page - and what I read is a text that presents a worldview of "everything is shit." Over and over again.

Multi-award-winning author Richard Morgan returns to SF with a vengeance! Richard Morgan has always been one of our most successful SF authors with his fast-moving and brutal storylines, blistering plots and a powerful social conscience behind his work.

And now he’s back, with his first SF novel for eight years... and it promises to be a publication to remember.

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I just finished reading The Steel Remains and have decided I'm a fan of Richard K. Morgan. Interestingly, I'd read and enjoyed his work without ever realizing it since I was a huge fan of his Black Widow comic books. I thought he was the first person (as this was 2005), to treat Natasha Romanova as an actual character with lots of contradictory loyalties and stresses. I'm about halfway through The Cold Commands and am loving it. I'm also eager to purchase/read the Kovacs novels.